CEV to be made commercially available

"JHNichols" wrote in message
...
There's a South Park episode lurking in there somewhere.
(Cut to image of Kenny impaled on a solar array.) :-D

Pat

There is an episode were the children are standing at the bus stop before
school and MIR falls on Kenny.

"Oh, my God, MIR killed Kenny! You *******s!"

In Dead Like Me's first episode the main character gets killed by a toilet
seat falling from Mir. Then she got herself a new career.

In article .com,
wrote:
The stick is only planned to be partially resuable.

Planned, yes. However, the simple fact is that the first solid stage is
reusable...

Only in the loosest sense of the word, given the amount of refurbishing
work that has to be done after every flight. The only reason anybody
takes that seriously as "reusability" is the juxtaposition with the
enormous efforts that go into refurbishing the orbiter.

while the second stage goes to orbit, leaving large
propellant tanks and the SSME available. The tanks would make a fine
basis for a space station or an upper stage (or...

That's not reusability; that's salvage. Reusability means it can do
the same job repeatedly.

...the SSME can be cut off and returned.

I don't believe that CEV, by current notions, is big enough to return it.
This is a theoretical future possibility, not something that can
reasonably be cited as a virtue of the current system.

It's only a lack of
even moderate imagination that makes the 2nd stage expendable.

No, it's the lack of a reentry system that could return it for reuse. I
agree that the hardware itself isn't inherently limited to a single use --
as best one can tell, given how little detail exists -- but as currently
conceived, that stage is 100% expendable.

There were proposals to make Saturn stages reusable too. That doesn't
mean the Saturns weren't expendables, because those proposals were never
acted on.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
The fundamental cost of
putting mass into orbit with LOX/kerosene is under $1.50/kg.

Wait a minute; leaving the LOX out of the equation...

Which is reasonable, since the LOX (which is 3/4 of the propellant mass)
costs almost nothing in large quantities.

I can accelerate 1
kg of mass to 18,000 mph and 100 miles altitude with the energy in
around 2/3rds of a gallon of Kerosene?

Mutter, grumble, archaic units... It takes about 4kg of kerosene (and
10kg of LOX), and figuring RP-1 at a density of 0.8, that's 5 liters, or
about 1.3 US gallons. I'm using price numbers a year or two old, because
the recent upward lurch in petroleum-fuel prices is an artifact of
politics and current events, and I'm skeptical on whether it will last.
(Yes, we will run out of oil eventually, but it has *not* happened yet --
the current problems are a shortage of refining capacity and political
limits on oil production, not wells running dry.)

Price of LOX in 2001 was about $.67 per gallon.

If I've done the conversion to sensible units correctly, that must be a
small-quantity price. It's much less in bulk.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

That's not reusability; that's salvage. Reusability means it can do the same job repeatedly.

Or that it can be reused for something else.

Ahem:

re·use ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-yz)
tr.v. re·used, re·us·ing, re·us·es
To use again, especially after salvaging or special treatment or
processing.

reuse
v : use again after processing; "We must recycle the cardboard boxes"
[syn: recycle, reprocess]


OK. Where's my damned T-shirt?


It's only a lack of even moderate imagination that makes the 2nd stage expendable.

No, it's the lack of a reentry system that could return it for reuse.

Such a system is fairly easily developed. The Russians have done it a
few times, though they keep losing the friggen' things.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Stick is fully reusable.

The stick is only planned to be partially resuable.

Planned, yes. However, the simple fact is that the first solid stage is
reusable, while the second stage goes to orbit, leaving large
propellant tanks and the SSME available. The tanks would make a fine
basis for a space station or an upper stage (or a propellant storage
facility, hab modules for the lunar surface, raw materials for SPS, you
name it); the SSME can be cut off and returned.

Returned how? The CEV isn't big enough to return an SSME.

Also, look how many ET's have been dumped into the ocean, despite the fact
that when they are released, they very nearly have orbital velocity. Once
the ET is dropped, the OMS system only has to perform a modest burn
(compared to the burn of the SSME's) to get the shuttle into orbit. None of
these ET's has been used for anything useful.

It's only a lack of
even moderate imagination that makes the 2nd stage expendable.

NASA clearly lacks that imagination, as their lunar mission architecture
requires only a single docking in LEO before departing for the moon. They
lack the desire to do any orbital assembly (beyond a single docking). The
second stages of the stick will do nothing more than create a light show as
they reenter earth's atmosphere and burn up. Your wishful thinking will not
change this, just as the same wishful thinking never resulted in a single ET
being taken to LEO.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Really. As the man said: Don't think inside the box. The box is not
your friend.

Tell that to NASA. Their "new" lunar mission architecture is so similar to
Apollo that it's pathetic. The only thing they've done is take the people
off the heavy lifter and launch them on a smaller launch vehicle. The
remainder of the architecture really is Apollo Part II.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 13:34:26 -0400, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:

Tell that to NASA. Their "new" lunar mission architecture is so similar to
Apollo that it's pathetic. The only thing they've done is take the people
off the heavy lifter and launch them on a smaller launch vehicle. The
remainder of the architecture really is Apollo Part II.

....Jeff, if it gets us back there, then who gives a flying ****? The
more people like you whine and bitch and fart about the method, the
longer it's going to take to get there. You have to accept the fact
that sometimes the exotic, elegant solution is a) not going to happen
because b) it will take too long and c) won't be able to get the
required funding.

Sometimes quick'n'dirty has to be grin'n'bear it. Otherwise you don't
get either.

OM

--

"Try Andre Dead Duck Canadian Champagne! | http://www.io.com/~o_m
Rated the lamest of the cheapest deported | Sergeant-At-Arms
brands by the Condemned in Killfile Hell!" | Human O-Ring Society

"OM" om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote
in message ...
On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 13:34:26 -0400, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:

Tell that to NASA. Their "new" lunar mission architecture is so similar
to
Apollo that it's pathetic. The only thing they've done is take the
people
off the heavy lifter and launch them on a smaller launch vehicle. The
remainder of the architecture really is Apollo Part II.

...Jeff, if it gets us back there, then who gives a flying ****? The
more people like you whine and bitch and fart about the method, the
longer it's going to take to get there. You have to accept the fact
that sometimes the exotic, elegant solution is a) not going to happen
because b) it will take too long and c) won't be able to get the
required funding.

Sometimes quick'n'dirty has to be grin'n'bear it. Otherwise you don't
get either.

Then I pick neither. Unless NASA is willing to do for manned spaceflight
what NACA did for air transport, then I don't feel it should be in the
business of manned spaceflight at all.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 13:13:47 -0500, Jeff Findley wrote
(in article ):


Then I pick neither. Unless NASA is willing to do for manned spaceflight
what NACA did for air transport, then I don't feel it should be in the
business of manned spaceflight at all.

Whining about 45 years' worth of entrenched methodology doesn't help,
either. Expecting change out of a government agency is absurd.

At the same time, the Glories of Private Enterprise haven't stepped up
to the plate either.

--
"Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever." ~Anonymous
"I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
~Todd Stuart Phillips
www.angryherb.net

Jake McGuire wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:


Alan Anderson wrote:



Surprising, no? Do the math. Kinetic energy of 1 kg at orbital
velocity is only about 75 megajoules. Burning a gallon of kerosene
yields nearly twice that.




We've got to add the cost of the LOX into the equation.
Since LOX is far less dense than kerosene,



Huh? LOX specific gravity (NBP, 1 atm) is a bit over 1.1, kerosene is
a bit under 0.8.


I slipped up- the optimum mixture ratio of LOX or to kerosene is 2.56 to
1: http://www.astronautix.com/props/loxosene.htm
And I confused that with LOX's specific gravity.



we're going to need more of
it than kerosene by volume to get this to work; so we take our $1.75
per gallon for the kerosene, divide that by two to end up with around
$.85 for the kerosene, add around a gallon of LOX at $.67 to end up
with around $1.50 for propellents.



Most commercial transportation seems to come out somewhere in the
neighborhood of 7 times fuel costs. Or at least airlines and trucking
companies do. So perhaps $10 per pound is not unreasonable, or maybe
$100 per pound if you can get payload up to 10% of dry mass.



And providing your vehicle is 100% reusable, and needs very little
maintenance between flights- similar to an airliner.
Ideally it would be SSTO and take of and land horizontally like an
airliner does to avoid the costs of elevating it on a pad for launch. I
don't think we know how to do that yet. If you tried it you might end up
with something the size of the Star-Raker to get a Shuttle-sized payload
into orbit: http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/SpaceLVs/Slides/sld047.htm
If you could be sure that the technology would work, that would probably
be the way to go.
They were shooting for a 100 ton payload, but this looks very iffy based
on the X-33 debacle.
Then there are the R&D costs for it that have to be ameliorated during
the vehicle's operational life, which means that you had better hope
that a lot of payloads show up once you can get the price down. At the
moment, it probably isn't all that expensive to fly things to
Antarctica- but there is no great demand to fly things to Antarctica
despite that fact.

Pat